PPC vs. SEO: Why Can’t They Be Friends?

Just as web designers and SEO specialists can go head to head on issues, the same can be said about PPC and SEO people. For those who don’t know, PPC is short of pay-per-click campaigns. These are the ads that you see on search engines and other places around the web.

A pay-per-click campaign is just that – you pay a certain amount of money every time someone clicks on your advertisement. PPC is just as competitive as SEO, only it has to do with money. You want to be not only in the highest position on the page (the top three on Google’s searches, for instance), but you want to pay the least amount possible for that position. It’s pretty complicated, especially if you don’t know what you’re doing.

Many marketing companies choose to use PPC campaigns over SEO because your listing will be in the top three pages. They’ll spend thousands of dollars – PPC is not cheap, no matter who tells you differently – to make sure their ad is the first thing the consumer sees when searching for a product or service. These companies claim that SEO is really not worth doing anymore, that fighting for a spot on the front page is a losing battle, and that it’s just dead, dead, very dead. And SEO specialists might turn around and attack PPC, saying it’s too expensive, that your ad will only last as long as your budget holds out, and the consumer would rather click on an organic listing than an ad any day.

Here’s why. For PPC to get a low bid yet high ranking, the landing page needs to have quality content with proper keywords. In other words, you need an SEO optimized page to get a good big for your PPC. And as for SEO, it takes some time to kick in as we’ve said before. If you have a new website, you’re not going to see your listing move very far for a while. So what should you do? Spend a little money and use PPC.

When PPC and SEO work together, magic can happen. For instance, is the copy you’re using in your PPC ad getting some great results? Maybe you should take that copy and use it in the meta description of that page which can help your organic rank. You know that keyword searches you do to see what people are searching for? Well you can create ads that focus on those popular keywords.

Marketing is one big puzzle and all the pieces need to fit in perfect harmony. Just like your web design needs to be optimized for SEO, your SEO can learn a thing or two from PPC and vice versa. And of course, a complete package will get you the best results.